


Sitting in the Jeep

by Mad_Martini



Category: Airwolf
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:59:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7196843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Martini/pseuds/Mad_Martini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>String reflecting on life</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sitting in the Jeep

Sitting in the Jeep, he let his eyes follow those familiar smooth lines of the chopper. For all of her intimidating presence, String couldn’t help but see nothing more than a graceful, elegant creation.  
He loved flying, always had. From the first time he’d taken control of an aircraft, under Dom’s gentle tutelage, he had pictured nothing else for his future, other than working at Santini Air, with Dom and Saint John, and flying.  
Then the Vietnam War came along. Everything had changed. He had changed. He’d been shot down too many times, lucky to escape with the few injuries he’d sustained, but when his brother went down, went missing, he had sustained his worst injury, the guilt of being the survivor, yet again, and had closed himself off from the world.  
Returning from the war an intense, brooding and more introspective man, it had taken a long time for life to begin readjusting towards normality. Not that anything could ever really be normal again.  
Gone was the carefree, quick to smile man. In his place, String had become a stranger, even to himself. More apt to silence than smiling, he shunned people, becoming a loner. Even with Dom Santini, the man who had become a father and mentor, there was an aloofness that had not existed before.  
On a commendation from the Army, he’d been recruited by the Firm as a test pilot. For String, it was an opportunity to put to use his new contacts to locate his brother. For the Firm, they knew they had gained something of a naturally gifted pilot in their ranks. And so he’d pushed himself in some of the fastest and technologically superior aerial prototypes, taking the machines, and often himself, up to and sometimes just over the limit. Whether it was a need to stare Death in the face and let it be known that he just didn’t care, or if he just needed to prove to himself that he could take himself out to that edge and return, he wasn’t sure. But it hadn’t changed anything.  
Until Airwolf.  
He stepped out of the Jeep and approached the helicopter. Running a calloused hand over her sleek side panels, a caress, perhaps? He smiled to himself. Dom was the one who treated the Lady as though she was a sentient being. In his mind, he could see why, but it was part of his relationship with Dom, the banter between the hopeless romantic and the calculating logistician.  
Looking back, he reflected on his decision to return to civilian flying, working for Dom again. It had been because of Airwolf. At the time, he had suspected that he would never fly a more interesting, challenging aircraft. The finesse, the perfect control that was needed just to keep her flying true at supersonic speeds. During the tests, the white coats in the control tower, even Moffet, the designer, had been surprised at some of the manoeuvres String had been able to perfect behind the controls of Airwolf.  
And then, he’d been reassigned at short notice. Short shrift more like it. Moffet had seen a threat in String’s skills, and acted. So he had resigned. Went back to work for Dominic, performing stunts and maintenance, flying for wealthy industrialists, movies and tour groups. He relished the opportunity to be a grease monkey for Dom again, after years away. It was familiar, like he had finally come home.  
Until she called him again. Airwolf.  
He hated to think of the fact that he was using this sleek creature of grace as leverage to locate his brother, dead or alive. And he knew that, despite Archangel’s insistence, the Firm was not looking for Saint John with all of their resources. Not while they had Hawke on a string that was attached to Airwolf.  
When Archangel had approached him initially about recovering Airwolf, the glimmer of hope that Saint John could still be alive in Vietnam had brightened again. But, as he’d learned over the last year, that hope could be easily turned and used against him by those looking for the political advantage that Airwolf could provide. And String had no time for politics, nor the desire to be anyone’s puppet.  
There was a thought that did plague String, on the quiet solitary evenings at the cabin. The possibility that the Firm knew that Saint John was dead, but were withholding the information, in order to keep String, and by default Airwolf, in the air and flying missions for them. Or it could be that Archangel didn’t want to pass on further bad news to his friend. If he could class Archangel as a friend. Michael was very capable of dancing the blurred boundary between moral ambiguity and moral ignorance as the situation required.  
Sure, he mused, his life had been much more simple before Airwolf had come along. But with the thrill of pushing Mach 1 in a helicopter, old feelings had returned. The feeling of flying purely for the love of it, reminding him of the day Dom had handed over control of an aeroplane, the swoop of joy in his chest when he realised that he was in total control of the plane.  
Airwolf was slowly allowing the return of the Stringfellow Hawke of old. And strangely enough, String was happy, and maybe ready, to allow it to happen.

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I wrote years ago, and finally found the place to share it.


End file.
